Surf’s up: Remembering Brian Wilson

I first met Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson in 2002, backstage at Royce Hall on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. He was headlining a lung cancer benefit concert in tribute to his younger brother and fellow Beach Boy Carl, who died of the disease in 1998. He was propped against a wall, alone. I thrust my hand out, and when he clasped it I was surprised by its size and his stature. Then I remembered that he played football for Hawthorne High School in the Los Angeles suburb where he and brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love, and friend Alan Jardine forged their signature California sound.

The Beach Boys’ sound and lyrics inspired many to pursue the mythical California dream of cars, surfing, and sunshine. Last year, Brian Wilson was diagnosed with a “major neurocognitive disorder.” He died Wednesday.

The Beach Boys began humbly. Parents Murry and Audree Wilson left their sons at home for a Labor Day weekend with a well-provisioned refrigerator and beckoning pile of emergency cash, which they promptly used to buy musical instruments. They were in the midst of rehearsals when their parents returned. An initially furious Murry was won over by the boys’ performance of “Surfin,’” which became their first single, released in 1962.

That ode to surfing, a pastime which none of the band members engaged in save Dennis, launched a string of album releases and hit singles. Songs like “I Get Around” and “California Girls” have become a part of the American musical pantheon. When Wilson was only in his 20s, Capitol Records gave him unprecedented access and control over the recording process. LA’s best studio musicians—dubbed “The Wrecking Crew”— took direction from one who seemed a mere kid. He quickly earned their admiration.

But by 1964, cracks in Wilson’s fragile psyche appeared. On a flight to Houston with other band members, he had what was described as a nervous breakdown minutes into the flight. After that, he took more than 10 years’ sabbatical from performing with the group, diving into songwriting and producing Beach Boys music in the studio. Eventually, effervescent car and surfing songs gave way to the increasingly melancholy and reflective, culminating in the sonic resonance of 1966’s Pet Sounds, a record that inspired the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Wilson’s follow-up, Smile, which he envisioned as a “teenage symphony to God,” fell apart in the studio. Neither band members nor Capital execs were convinced of the album’s commercial appeal given its experimental sounds and whimsical, often opaque lyrics by Van Dyke Parks—a far cry from the sun-soaked songs audiences were used to. Wilson delayed, then canceled the project. From there he descended into decades of drug addiction, self-abuse, and the manipulative control of psychotherapist Eugene Landy (a period covered in the 2014 biopic Love and Mercy).

But that’s not the end of his story. In 1986, he met former model Melinda Ledbetter, who proved a stabilizing influence. Because of concerns about Wilson’s mental deterioration, Carl Wilson took legal action that ended Landy’s all-encompassing grip on Wilson in 1992. Wilson and Ledbetter wed in 1995. (She died in January 2024. In a hint of the struggle to come, Wilson wrote at the time, “Our five children and I are just in tears. We are lost. Melinda was more than my wife. She was my savior.”)

After marrying Ledbetter and sidelining Landy, Wilson enjoyed a second chapter in his career with support from band manager and Christian Jeffrey Foskett, LA band The Wondermints, and others. He performed a mix of classic Beach Boys tunes and new material. His last solo album of new material, 2015’s No Pier Pressure, featured Wilson flanked by younger pop artists such as Kacey Musgraves and select Beach Boys personnel, from Al Jardine to David Marks, an early member.

With the encouragement of The Wondermints’ Darian Sahanaja and joined by lyrical collaborator Van Dyke Parks, a re-energized Wilson was able to complete and re-record Smile, the long-shelved project, and take it on tour. He later earned two Grammys—one for The Smile Sessions box set, another for his solo instrumental on Smile’s “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow.” Other honors included a Grammy lifetime achievement prize, induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and a tribute at the Kennedy Center that featured the Libera boys choir’s angelic performance of Wilson’s “Love and Mercy.”

In 2012, Wilson and the other surviving members of the Beach Boys reunited to record a well-received album of songs, That’s Why God Made the Radio, including many co-written by Wilson. Rather than sunny optimism, some, like “Pacific Coast Highway,” have an autumnal feel. “Sometimes I realize my days are getting on/ Sometimes I realize it’s time to move on/ And I wanna go home,” sang Wilson. A tour followed the album but was cut short by disagreements among band members. It was the last time Wilson would perform with the band.

In Making God Smile, a 2002 album tribute to Wilson that I co-produced, veteran Nashville artist Phil Madeira confirmed what many musicians who admire Wilson have said. “When I was a child, the Beach Boys’ music was about cars and surfboards, girls and California,” Madeira wrote in liner notes. “But when I became an adult, I discovered Brian’s real gift wasn’t about fun, fun, fun; it was about structure, harmony, invention, and sound.”

The last time I talked with Wilson was in August 2005 after a concert at the Filene Center in Wolf Trap, Va. His encore included a medley of the gospel-tinged “Walking Down the Path of Life” and “Love and Mercy,” released on a single as a benefit for victims of Hurricane Katrina. In it, he pleaded for God to “touch me, heal me, wash my sins away.” My friend asked where the song came from. “God gave it to me,” he said.

Wilson is survived by Carnie and Wendy Wilson, children of his first marriage to Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford, five children adopted with his second wife, Melinda, and six grandchildren. “We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away,” the children wrote on Wilson’s website.

Love and mercy, Brian Wilson.